page_title: Mercury Meteor
section_title: Meteor (Ford of Canada brand)
hierarchical_section_title: Mercury Meteor / Meteor (Ford of Canada brand)
caption_attribution_description: 1954 Meteor Niagara - Canadian car.
context_page_description: The Mercury Meteor is an automobile that was produced by Mercury from 1961 to 1963. For 1961, the name was applied to low-end full-sized vehicles; for 1962 and 1963, the name was applied to Mercury's mid-sized sedans, in a marketing attempt to appeal to the excitement surrounding the Space Race, before being discontinued. Introduced while Mercury as a marque was in flux, and never a solid marketplace performer in consumer sales, the Meteor remains more a side note than a well known Mercury product.
context_section_description: Meteor was first used by Ford of Canada as the brand name for a distinct line of models introduced in 1949.  The standalone Meteor brand name used then-contemporary Ford models, trimmed specifically for the Canadian market with unique grilles, taillights and other trim to marginally differentiate them from the Ford vehicles. This was done to give Canadian Lincoln-Mercury dealerships a product to sell in the low-price field, similar to Ford of Canada dealerships offering the Monarch line of lower-price vehicles which were actually another variation of Ford models with unique trim and model names. This was typical practice in the Canadian market (compared to that of the United States), where smaller towns might have only a Ford dealer or a Lincoln-Mercury dealer, but often not both.  The introduction of Meteor also gave Lincoln-Mercury a direct competitor to the GM Pontiac brand in Canada.
  From 1961 to 1963, the Meteor brand was temporarily discontinued, as the Mercury division used the Meteor name for a midsize car based on the Ford Fairlane.  In addition, in both the United States and Canada, the Mercury division was shifted downward in price.
  In 1964, Lincoln-Mercury reintroduced the Meteor brand, replacing the Mercury Monterey in Canada.  In contrast to previous versions, new Meteors used Mercury bodies, distinguished by the use of Ford interior trim.  After 1976, the separate Meteor model lines were discontinued, with the nameplate becoming a low-cost trim of the Mercury Marquis in Canada through the 1981 model year.
caption: 1954 Meteor Niagara
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